[PS4] Kerbal Space Program Review

Do like space? Did you grow up wanting to visit NASA and be an astronaut? Were you a fan of Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin or maybe even Jim Lovell? How do you fancy learning rocket science? Kerbal Space Program gives you the unique opportunity to build rockets and other space vehicles from scratch and lift off into space. I don’t think there is anything quite like Kerbal Space Program anywhere in the market. Kerbal Space Program is the gaming version of NASA, which is set on a distant planet called Kerbin, inhabited by little green aliens called Kerbals. How does the gameplay on the PS4 feel? Read our Kerbal Space Program Review to find out!

Kerbal Space Program is a game where players create and manage their own space program. Build spacecraft, fly them and try to help the Kerbals to fulfill their ultimate mission of conquering space.

Kerbal Space Program Trailer

The core of Kerbal Space Program is learning how to build space-faring vehicles, and lift them off into space to explore to your heart’s content. You can also build Lunar Rovers to travel in once you’ve landed. Your first order of business is to build a simple rocket and actually get it into orbit, which is a challenge in itself! It took me a few hours to be able to take off, and I crashed back on Kerbin within seconds. I’m not sure what I did wrong, but at least I managed to get off the planet! Kerbal Space Program is not an easy game, and I fear a large number of players may not get very far since it is extremely difficult to achieve a planet landing.

The tutorials are quite long, and you will most likely spend a good few hours just going through them all – you will probably need to go back a few times for reminders as there is a ton of information to absorb. I wouldn’t consider skipping them either, as you will just end up tearing your hair out. After doing the tutorials, I created my very first ship in sandbox mode and after many tries and tweaking… well, you already know the rest of the story!

Once you complete the tutorial mode, you should first start Sandbox mode. The reason for that is you will need a lot of practice and Sandbox allows you to do that without any restrictions. There are no limits on financing, and everything is available from the start. There are no missions to complete: it is you and your creativity. You can let your imagination go wild and create the craziest ship you want and try and get it off the ground.

Take note that I advise setting the UI size to the maximum value as the in-game text is very small, and even with the UI setting to max, the camera is a bit awkward, but adjusting the motion controls fixes that issue. Also, do you like inverted gameplay? I hope so, because inverted controls can’t be turned off!

When you feel confident enough in your skills, you can try out Science mode. In this mode, you conduct research in order to unlock new space parts to progress. You will be free of contract, money and reputation, which are present in career mode. In this mode you gather data using sensors – recovering and transmitting data gives you science points which you can then use in the Research and Development facility to research parts which then unlock for you to use. You have a technology tree you can spend your science points on to unlock new parts.

When you are done with Science mode, you can move to the harder mode, which is the Career mode. In this one, you build your ship and have to worry about spending costs. To get more money to buy better parts for your ship, you have to take on and complete contracts, for which you will earn money, and your reputation will increase. Career mode is a full on simulation experience, but it is also very hard, as you will need to be quite proficient in ship building and being able to take off and land on other planets. If you can’t tackle that, then you won’t get very far. Due to the difficulty of the game, I guess not many will manage their first landing. A friend of mine has been playing since launch, and the poor guy still has trouble landing on a planet, but at least he can reach a planet’s orbit!

Graphically Kerbal Space Program game is very cute, but not particularly vibrant, and the colors and textures look somewhat dull. There are some issues with framerate drops here and there. I had quite a bit of fun with Sandbox more for many hours, just playing around with the parts and creating different designs – there was a lot of room for experimentation, and I LOVED that. The game might at first seem pretty expensive for an indie game, but you could easily end up pouring 100+ hours in it, so it is definitely worth it in that sense. Hopefully my Kerbal Space Program review has shown you if this is the type of game you’d like to play!

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